The semiconductor device industry has a market driven need to improve speed performance, improve its low static (off-state) power requirements, and lower production costs for its silicon based microelectronic products. In particular, there is continuous pressure to reduce the size of devices such as transistors. To reduce transistor size, the thickness of the silicon dioxide, SiO2, gate dielectric is reduced in proportion to the shrinkage of the gate length. For example, a metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) would use a 1.5 nm thick SiO2 gate dielectric for a gate length of 70 nm. The ultimate goal is to fabricate increasingly smaller and more reliable integrated circuits (ICs) for use in products such as processor chips, mobile telephones, and memory devices such as dynamic random access memories (DRAMs).
Currently, the semiconductor industry relies on the ability to reduce or scale the dimensions of its basic devices, primarily, the silicon based MOSFET. This device scaling includes scaling the gate dielectric, which has primarily been fabricated using silicon dioxide. A thermally grown amorphous SiO2 layer provides an electrically and thermodynamically stable material, where the interface of the SiO2 layer with underlying silicon provides a high quality interface as well as superior electrical isolation properties. However, increased scaling and other requirements in microelectronic devices have created the need to use other dielectric materials as gate dielectrics.